Sounds similar to my situation, but I don't know what's really going on in my engine. I'll submit it for evaluation here, since this seems an appropriate thread.
It usually starts up fine, though cold weather makes it noticeably harder. I don't get any white smoke, but I do get a noticeable bit of blue smoke on start-up if the car's been sitting for a couple days. One member who listened to it said it sounds like it's not firing all the cylinders. It has a stable idle, about 1200 when cold and 700 when warmed up, although at lower idle you can feel a little bit of a shake (if you look at the engine, you'll be able to see it) but not violent or anything. New plugs/wires/cap/rotor don't help the idle. The power's like a 4-cyl is in the car, the fuel consumption's like a big block 8 is in the car, and until the oil's thoroughly warmed the pressure gauge reads about 37, with 12ish after the oil's heated. I do have the waterfall sound behind the dash, but I've never burped the system and the coolant level's steady.
The overflow bottle never overflows, though I've had to add water twice in 4 years. There's no white smoke, no milky oil, none of the usual signs I can tell without a coolant tester. The coolant itself on visual inspection is the usual radioactive green, transparent. Though last time I looked, it almost seemed as if it had some sort of oil thing going on, just a trace amount. By this I mean the kind of thing you get when rainwater collects in a parking lot and the oils and dirt on the pavement makes that rainbow-ish effect on the top of the water.
The head has to come off anyway to replace the valve stem seals (smoke on start-up) so if it is BHG it'll get fixed in the process of that. I'm just curious what people think.
